Earlier this week, The Pokemon Company aired a special video for the franchise’s 30th Anniversary during the North American Super Bowl LX Football game.

Due to the scale of the event, brands typically pay an estimated $8 to $10 million USD for a 30 second ad spot. As the 30th Anniversary video was a minute long, this means The Pokemon Company could have spent between $16 to $20 million just to show the video during the game, not including the celebrity appearances. For comparison, this amount is more than the rumored budget for Pokemon Legends Z-A, which leakers claimed amounted to around $13 million USD.

Despite the ad being more of a celebration for the franchise as a whole, this information has been met with widespread criticism from fans. Many of them feel that the money would have been better spent being used for game development, given that the rumored budget for the mainline games is well below estimates for other major titles.

This is however not the first time The Pokemon Company has come under fire for spending money on the Super Bowl. 10 years ago, The Pokemon Company also had a spot on the Super Bowl L for the franchise’s 20th Anniversary, presumably also spending a similar amount of money. Fans back then reportedly levelled similar complaints about the move, although the reputation of the videogames was not quite as poor as it is now.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.